Rental Market – Upcoming in India

Perhaps India has the largest number of upcoming startups in the online rental space after US; India is a large market for B2C ideas and concepts. With the growth of the e-commerce industry in a big way, especially hitting the $ Billion targets through millions of transactions, there is an industry around second hands goods which is quickly growing on the footsteps. The second hand products market could be broadly classified again in terms of second hand sales versus rental of products.

While in second hand sale, you sell a product that you have used and do not require; in rental concept you rent out a sparingly used product – which you might use once in a month or so and can spare for the rest of the time. It is hard to say which is bigger, however the enablement of the same on a peer to peer basis is similar by creating online marketplaces which match the person who has spare to person who requires the product.

Rental Market- A comparison on growing Vertical versus Horizontal

Flipkart and Amazon started with Books alone and then became the online hypermarkets; while others like Snapdeal started as horizontal to serve all needs of customers directly. It is often a hard choice to whether enter a Service market like Rentals in a Vertical manner i.e. specific category or to go Horizontal i.e. to provide as many things as possible.

Pre-dominant Vertical markets in the rental space include things like Transport mainly cars, Fashion mainly apparels, Electronics mainly cameras or laptops on rent, Camping gears, etc; with the success of many of these initiatives, one is tempted to think that why cannot there be a horizontal play in online rental space. At the end of it, the basics of renting especially peer to peer renting would remain the same – there is a spare product from one person, and an online platform could match that with the need (esp short term need) of another person and in the process provide value to both parties. We have found in our experience that rental requirements for people arise mainly on some occasions whether it is moving into a new city, a celebration like birthday or wedding, etc. – in such scenarios it makes more sense to have a one stop shop for all renting needs; and hence RentSher chose to go Horizontal across categories.

A recent detailed report on Online Rental Startup landscape from Tracxn is quite useful to understand the trends in the industry. At a high level, in consumer facing categories, it talks of

Transport – Cars, Bikes on rent

Fashion – Luxury, Apparels, accessories on rent

Adventure – Boats, RV and Apparels on rent

Cameras, Books, Furniture on rent

Gaming & Video like DVD, TOys & Games on rent

Horizontal – Covering across categories

What we have also discovered in nearly an year of providing rental products on RentSher that people rent items when there are certain events happening, and we aim to provide things on rent that cater to those events, whether it is requiring costumes for school functions, projectors and TV Screens for training or awareness events, play areas for birthday parties, laptop for making a presentation, stroller or wheel chair for travel requirements and so on.

Also, when sourced peer to peer, the cost or per unit economics works out much better for both the owner and the renter. RentSher enables the discovery of the product and match it with the requirement, enables easy payment and security option and last and most importantly in most cases provides the fulfillment (delivery) also.

Rental Market – Marketplace versus Fulfilled Model

Today is the age of marketplaces, even the vertically integrated companies like Flipkart are referred as Marketplaces based on the large number of vendors that are providing and selling their products on them. The other extreme is Olx and Quikr like marketplaces which only do the listing of products and then the onus is on the buyer and seller to connect up and do the transaction. While it has some merit, the overhead of achieving a simple transaction via such process is huge, as one need to do many calls (or these days- chat with many people) to get a good deal and then arrange for transport.

On the other hand, a completely curated and managed marketplace like RentSher provides product selection, ordering and fulfillment just like the more acceptable user experience with e-commerce companies, except that it is dealing with a different need which is around renting rather than buying products.

In fact, renting is much more suitable than buying in several scenarios like one day event or limited use case like requiring a vaccuum cleaner or a barbeque grill only for a weekend. If the experience of renting these items is hassle free, then more

people will opt for the same, which is also demonstrated by the growing acceptance of the rental economy even in categories like furniture and home furnishings, which were traditionally owner and not rented by people.

Now Search, click, order Costumes on Rent faster on

RentSher

RentSher today has one of the largest collections of costumes online available on Rent all the way from kids to teenage to adults. This solves one problem of parents to easily get costumes on rent required for school functions, annual days, apartment cultural events and more. In a large city like Bangalore you would hardly know a place that rents out costumes for kids, and even if they do the mere cost of going there to pick up, try on and returning the dress would turn out to be more than the cost of the dress itself. Also you would not know what to expect unless you visit the shop. With online commerce portals and especially hyperlocal delivery coming in, things are changing. RentSher Online is one such agent of change, which has come in at the right time to cater to the needs of all parents and schools to help them fulfil the kids needs for good costumes, yet with the convenience of online ordering and home delivery.

Started in December 2014 with Christmas decorations and Santa Claus costumes, to cater to the growing demand, RentSher today has costumes available on rent in so many categories. To make the finding and ordering of costumes even simpler for our customers, RentSher has now introduced sub categories amongst the costume section, wherein you browse more easily and directly in costume you are interested in.

So, imagine a full shop available at your disposal and that too in a very organized manner.

Ethnic / Traditional – Different states of India from Kashmir to Karnataka ethnic dress for boys and girls to adorn and learn from.

Famous Personalities and National Leaders costumes ranging from Indira Gandhi, Mother Teresa, JawaharLal Nehru, Gandhi and many more.

Professions or Role Model based themes like Policeman, Doctor, Pilot, Air hostess and many more are common with children for both fancy dress competition and also specific school functions.

Superheroes- Favorites among boys like superman, spiderman, Batman, Krishh and a lot more.

Dance Costumes- Both Western and traditional of various colors and sizes available on rent

Nature Theme Costumes like all animal costumes, including sea animals like fish, dolphin and other rare animal’s dinosaurs which you would not even find in ordinary shops. All forms of fruits and vegetables costumes for kids are also available. The best part is that you can look at the whole catalogue online and decide which one your child likes best.

Other Theme Costumes like for Halloween, Christmas, Fairy Princesses and much more.

Birthday and other party themes – Children love the themes for their birthday parties. One of the best ways to get them immersed in the theme is to dress up for occasions. A fairy princess, a superhero, characters from their favorite movies or just an ethnic dress, you name it, we have it.

If you visit the site and the specific costume link http://www.rentsher.com/costumes, can actually see the sizes, colors and even sample dresses worn by kids to show how real life they are. RentSher has even provided costumes at full school level for their annual days.

One can imagine that the possibilities in costumes are many, so RentSher team is always available for any specific requirements that you might have for your child.